Both the number of people sentenced to death and the number executed declined in 2004, according to US Justice Department statistics released Sunday. According to the report, in 2004 a dozen states executed 59 prisoners, six less than in 2003 and 125 people convicted of murder received a death sentence, the smallest number since 1973. [...]

CIA interrogators tried to cover up the death of a man who died while being questioned at Abu Ghraib prison, according to a TIME magazine report published Sunday. The death of Manadel al-Jamadi was ruled a homicide in a US Department of Defense official autopsy obtained by TIME, citing cause of death as "blunt force [...]

President Bush is set to sign a bill this week providing for US military assistance to Nepal if its government "has restored civil liberties, is protecting human rights, and has demonstrated, through dialogue with Nepal's political parties, a commitment to a clear timetable to restore multi-party democratic government consistent with the 1990 Nepalese Constitution." Another [...]

Lawyers for former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic are urging another postponement in his trial for war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) , which has now spanned four years. After complaining recently of pains in the neck, ears and head, Milosevic was examined by three doctors from France, Russia and [...]

Four people were killed Saturday in continued violence over proposed changes to the Kenyan constitution as police tried to break up an anti-constitution rally in Mombassa, where President Mwai Kibaki , a supporter of the constitution, was visiting. Kenyans will vote in a November 21 referendum for the first major changes to the Kenyan charter [...]

Despite curfews and added security measures French youths continued to riot in the streets Saturday night. Central Paris was calm, but for the first time since rioting by disaffected Arab and African immigrant youth began 17 nights ago it has spread to another major city, Lyon . Cars and a nursery school were set ablaze [...]

A spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has claimed that agents supporting Saddam Hussein murdered two defense lawyers involved in the trial of the former Iraqi president and eight co-defendants in a bid to derail the proceeding. Adel Muhammad Abbas, a lawyer for Taha Yassin Ramadan , was murdered in Baghdad last week, three [...]

Final certified results of the September 18 Afghan election for the Wolesi Jirga (lower-house of parliament) and councils in all 34 provinces were released Saturday. Among those elected were three former members of the deposed Taliban and several former Afghan commanders, some of whom have been accused of war crimes during the Afghan civil war. [...]

Beatrice B. McWaters et al. v. Federal Emergency Management Agency, US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, November 10, 2005 . Read the full text of the complaint . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Saturday criticised Syria for its "arbitrary detention" of human rights activists "including Kamal Labwani and all the prisoners of conscience from the Damascus Spring" during a conference in Bahrain attended by Arab leaders. The Damascus Spring followed the June 2000 death of President Hafez al-Assad, and was a period [...]